BATH, Maine — Ray Wing of Manchester, an electrician at Bath Iron Works, leaves his house just after 5 a.m. every day in his 13-person van. By the time he makes stops in Manchester, Augusta and Gardiner, the van is nearly full.
With the scenery monotonous — Wing’s been making the trip for 24 years — they listen to the radio, pass around a newspaper and talk about all manner of subjects from building warships to deer hunting.
“It works out pretty good, except for listening to these guys whine,” joked Wing, who has driven co-workers to BIW for the past 13 years.
The fact of the matter is that for about $6 a day, they’re all saving themselves the considerable expenses associated with a daily 80-mile commute. Just for gas, that drive would cost about $12 a day in a vehicle attaining 25 miles per gallon.
Wing’s commuter system is pretty typical for many of BIW’s 5,200 workers, though for some the distances are longer and the expenses are much higher.
Bath Iron Works spokesman James Demartini said as of the end of 2011, the Bath shipyard’s workforce hailed from 14 of Maine’s 16 counties — all except Aroostook and Hancock. There are even workers from the Washington County towns of Calais and Baileyville, which are some four hours and more than 200 miles away. Demartini said some workers stay with friends or relatives during the week, or in some cases they rent a local apartment.
“The work here is very demanding and requires high skill,” said Demartini. “For those looking for the challenge and the sense of knowing you’re doing something good for this country in building these ships, the commute is worth it.”
Father and son Tracy and Justin Ripley, who come to BIW in a commuter van from the Clinton area north of Waterville — almost 70 miles each way — said BIW’s good pay and benefits outweigh the time and money they spend to get there. According to Dan Dowling, president of Local S6 of the machinists union, which represents 3,000 BIW workers, rookies are paid $14.83 an hour, though at least 90 percent of the union members make $20 an hour and up due to their tenure on the job.
“The pay and benefits are good and there are no other jobs around,” said Tracy Ripley, who has worked at BIW for 34 years. “I’m used to the commute. I like riding better than driving, though.”
According to Demartini, about 91 percent of BIW workers come from the surrounding counties of Sagadahoc (1,500 workers), Androscoggin (1,100), Cumberland (900), Kennebec (800) and Lincoln (575). About 430 workers come from Lewiston and Auburn alone. Though the twin cities are only about 27 miles away, it’s a minimum 45-minute ride, almost twice the average 25-minute commute in the United States, according to Census data. The average travel time in Maine is about 23 minutes, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. About 30 percent of Mainers commute 30 minutes or more, with about 6 percent driving more than an hour each way every day.
Glenn Mills, chief economist for the Maine Department of Labor’s Center for Workforce Research, said BIW has long been known for drawing workers from all corners of Maine, especially in the 1980s and 1990s when the company employed more than 12,000 people. Long commutes are also commonplace for workers at the state’s paper mills, though like BIW the number of jobs in that industry is a fraction of what it once was.
“Longer commutes are typical wherever there’s large dollars available for the blue-collar population,” said Mills. “There are many communities in Maine where the economy has kind of dried up over the years … where textile mills and paper mills have closed down. For people who have stayed in those areas it’s kind of a lifestyle to spend a lot of time driving either to work or to do other things.”
Some of Maine’s other large manufacturers also draw workers from a wide area. IDEXX Laboratories, which employs 1,800 people in Westbrook, told the Bangor Daily News recently that its workers come from 13 Maine counties as well as Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont.
Dowling, the BIW union president, said he knows of numerous workers who come from the Belfast and Bangor areas, as well as the far reaches of southern and western Maine.
“We still have plenty of people who drive their own personal vehicles, but the majority of them carpool,” he said. “If everyone drove their own individual vehicle, we’d have a massive parking problem.”
Dowling and Demartini said the parking situation is eased by numerous commuter lots in Bath and Woolwich, some of which are owned privately. BIW runs buses to and from some of the lots, but otherwise doesn’t subsidize workers’ commutes.
Justin Ripley, who leaves his home in Clinton every day at about 4:50 a.m. and is home after 5:30 p.m., said for him the commute is a small price to pay to work at BIW. He hopes to make a career there, just as his father has.
“The money is good, the benefits are good,” he said. “And I love what I do.”
Life is good now but what will happen if the “FISCAL CLIFF(massive defense cuts)” occurs?
You mean when the Navy doesn’t have the money to buy ships they didn’t want in the first place?
You can only up grade ships so far before you need new ones .
Don’t get me wrong, its great the Navy is being forced to buy ships they don’t want, It puts people to work, but BIW could teach Jordan’s a few things about pork.
How is the navy being forced to buy ships they do not want ? when they no long serve there perpuss they get newer ships .
Senators Snow and Collins, that’s how pork works…
every politician since the end of the civil war, that’s how federal pork works
So every one that works for the federal government is on pork ?
You mean when the navy doesn’t have the money to buy ships that our newly anointed one didn’t want them to have!
Just think how many new “dependent” voters he can support for the price of another ship! After all, we don’t need more ships – until the next war starts – with China, Russia or Iran! Right?
In 2005 the Navy planned to increase the size of the fleet to 313 ships by 2020. Under Obama, that has been scaled back to a goal of 300 by 2019. The current number is 282. Navy secretary, Ray Mabus, says the Navy can meet its global defense needs with 300 ships, based on the new defense strategy released in January. Mabus told the Washington Post in February that most of the ships retired early would be old cruisers, and that most of the ships whose construction will be delayed are smaller, support vessels.
The U.S. Navy is now and has been gargantuan compared with any other country’s on earth. Never let the facts get in the way of your views. It’s why the GOP got schooled last week.
Plus you would half to support all the workers at BIW plus other people that would be lyed off because of the lost of BIW
what company would be around to build them were would the skilled workers come from ?
Exactly!
Can you prove that the Navy did not want those ships ?
That’s exactly what mean
Easy they will go on the state,, an the state of Maine will go down the tubes . Now don’t for get it not only effects the people at BIW but it effects all the vendors that do work for biw or provide some kind of service .
Except that it’s not a cliff and it’s nearly politically impossible to occur. Other than that we can all run screaming into the sea because of the big scary deficit monster, or bigfoot.
LOL….so borrowing money and printing the same is a long term solution for you?
just take a look at history pal, you’re are irrefutably wrong
If CBO adjusts its long-term health care cost projections downward (which they have reason to do) then the whole deficit hawk rationale for gutting Social Security and Medicare disappears with the long term deficit. Also, borrowing money and printing was the Keynsian way out of the Great Depression that was stymied by deficit hysteria in the late 1930’s. Regardless, it’s a long term problem that can be solved by fixing the immediate problem of 7.9% unemployment. But the election is over, so we won’t hear about that anymore.
Amen!
voting themselves out of a job is what unions do best.
Not at BIW .
give it time wolly….give it time
The union was at biw long before i got there an i worked there 20 years an retired back in 2008
An excellent question, but unfortunately immaterial to people who want to engage in class warfare and accumulate the means to buy “dependent” votes with money saved by cutting the defense budget – the only thing the federal government should be concerned with!
The only people engaged in class warfare were the corporations that owned manufacturing in Maine shipping off jobs to cheap foreign labor over the last thirty years. The result is these workers having to commute an extra shift per week to work.
If you want to know why manufacturing jobs have largely left Maine, just read the posts on many BDN threads! The anti-business attitude is so pervasive, that any Company CEO that would start (or continue) a manufacturing company in Maine would be deemed incompetent!
Maine is a nice place to live, but it will not be a good place for business until the overall attitude toward work and business changes. That will not happen until the welfare gravy train runs dry or until a lot of people get a lot more “hungry!”
I agree… I left the state for better life and job… Simply I don’t want to return to Maine again. I’m selling my house cheap so I don’t have a reason to return… Just the mind set in Maine is unbelievable. ‘We want to have green energy, wind, solar, water( W.S.W)”. Simple put.. it DOESN’T pay back… Natural gas is the answer… Clean and burns cleaner then coal and oil. USA and Canada have enough to last for 200 years or more… Maine does have natural gas but who want to drill when everyone thinks W,S,W is better…
People complaining about wind how it ruins the landscape and noises, Solar too expensive and take to much land. Water, oh no not the fishes… Coal is dirty, oil dirty, nuclear we all going to be a mutant. This is what I’m hearing alot…
Now a company is talking about doing mining in Aroostook County… I vote yes……..go go go….. If Maine have the minerals, Mined it. Create Jobs, Create more taxes to help education, health care, and towns and roads, etc. Then we have some funds to do R&D on other types of energy. Enough Said!!!
The textile, shoe, and paper industries left because cheap labor and lax environmental laws were available overseas. Denegrating the work ethic of those employees left behind is pathetic.
I stand by my post!
Read the posts on this and other threads. Do you see a “can do” attitude of people who want a job and want to make a real contribution to their employer (there are some) or do you see gripers and potential trouble making union members (they are many more!)
Why would any company buy into a situation that presents that kind of attitude from the get-go?
An encouraging article! It says there are still some people who will not sit at their remote home and demand to be paid by the rest to do nothing! However, relocating to where the jobs are would make more sense than spending four to six hours on the road each day!
Do you know the price to rent or buy a home . So they are suppose to sell that homes if they are paid for or will be paid off in the next 10 years ?
I definitely know the cost of homes – and the cost of moving. My wife and I moved over 20 times in our 55+ year marriage and I only drew unemployment for two weeks in all those years! For those who are motivated and REALLY willing to work, there is a job somewhere!
you moved 20 times to work that tells us one thing you were either a poor worker or did not have the education for jobs or you made poor choices in life
Sorry to disappoint you Devil or to destroy your “logic!”
I earned BSEE and MSEE degrees from a very prestigious state university, I served as a cryptographer and communications specialist with USAF Intelligence. My civilian career included multiple assignments including the Vice President level with international corporations. I semi-retired (I am still Chairman of the Board and the majority stockholder) as CEO of a US corporation that makes significant contributions to the US national defense and security.
The point of the original post was simple. I went where I needed to go to contribute where I needed to do so. I didn’t sit on my backside in one location and belly ache because someone (in government or otherwise) didn’t bring the opportunities to me!
Lets see here… Obama is going to cut defense spending and slow down on ship building, Yet Since Unions force their members to vote Liberal, isn’t that voting for someone to put you in the unemployment line… Painted yourselves into a corner did ya?
How do the unions force them to vote for them does the union have aperson at every polling place to look at there ballot ?
let see, since The right is yelling about spending to much, one would think you would cut spending in the areas that are spending the most, aka the military.
Or unearned “entitlements!”
yeah cut those to, put that is not the only place you are going to cut. It doesn’t make any sense. Do you think those entitlements make up like half the budget? You can cut them all, but you will still need a lot more cutting because just those are not going to do it for you.
Agreed!
Social Security is earned. Medicare is there to take care of the elderly. Medicaid is there to take care of the poor. Advocating cutting these programs with current economic conditions makes me wonder what part of last week you did not understand.
OH! I understand last week all too well!
It said that the USA may have reached the “tipping” point where entitlements are all important to the electorate and we will now slide inexorably toward the abyss like Greece, Spain, Italy and (soon) France!
We may (or may not) have one more election (in two years) to stop the slide!
Absolutely! But there aren’t enough voters at BIW – so they cannot expect a “bailout” from BHO!
Why do they need a bail out as you say ?
If our current US administration determines the navy doesn’t need more ships, BIW will have nothing to do, but they cannot expect a bailout from BHO since there are not enough votes there to make it worth his while!
Then BIW will fold an never open again an put over 6,000 out of work the land will be sold plus venors . Then watch the people whine they go on welfare an food stamps an other state services
I agree, and it would be a real tragedy for both the people of Maine and the national defense of the USA!
If BIW ever closes they will never open again .. You need two ship yards one can never keep up with the orders even Trent Lock said the same thing . If they did open up they would have no skilled workers as biw has found out in the past most that get laid off do not return an that cost biw money it takes a long time to train people an the quality of works goes down . The navy inspects every square inch of the ships
You are absolutely correct! That is why we struggled during the first months of WWII. Our national manufacturing capacity was driven to a minimum during the depression of the 1930’s. Unfortunately that situation already has occurred again. However, in some parts of the USA it is reversing and efficient manufacturing plants are returning – look at North and South Carolina.
Both of those states are right to work states an guess what they have one of the highest unemployment rates
Gee! Maybe that is why International corporations are building plants there rather than in Europe – or Maine.
Maybe they should think about setting up a bus route instead of having all of those vans
Or run the rail line from Brunswick to Bangor with good “commuting” schedules – it would be safer and much less expensive!
I would say you would need at least 40 buses or more plus the cost insurance ect an one guy looked into after doing the research it would cost to much
It is truly a sad state of affairs when you have to drive to the other end of the state to earn a living wage and have some sort of benefits.
it is, and the welfare-warfare state has provided it to you
Ok you people that want the navy to shut down BIW by not buying ships,, start a petition to do that . But don’t forget once it closes it will never open again it will be sold an the land will be made into condos
How refreshing! People who want to work.
When too many employees drive their own cars, there is not only a parking problem but severe traffic congestion-which frustrates both workers and city residents. Kudos to everyone that carpools!